Comments on: House – Episode 8 (Season Three): “Whac-A-Mole”

By: [R] AFAEL

[R] AFAEL — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:25:29 +0000

Hey, does Hep A really causes sudden nicotine intolerance?

By: TJ

TJ — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:15:59 +0000

I didn’t get the part about House’s arm hurting being psychosomatic pain. Even if he feels guilty about what he’s doing to Wilson, I think it’s a stretch that that would cause the arm pain. Isn’t it just the cane usage over time, beginning to cause pain now that he’s no longer on Vicodin?

By: Errick

Errick — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:02:37 +0000

Am I the only one who thought it a bit ridiculous for Chase to be digging around in a dumpster, searching for vomit to test, when anything in that dumpster would be so contaminated that any test results would be pretty meaningless? I mean really, anything they did manage to find would have all sorts of fun little germs and such in it after being in that dumpster, I’d think.

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:38:44 +0000

Hmm a comment on DIC- sure its ok to bleed from IV sites that have not healed yet- but bleeding floridly from the ears with no trauma seems over dramatic.
DIC has more internal petechial haemorrhages to my understanding. I guess for TV’s drama factor it is used but it is not fully correct!

By: Stephen Ding

Stephen Ding — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 23:05:29 +0000

Yeah, i felt that the episode was both good and enjoyable, but how hot is Cameron?

Very hot, and clever.

nice.

By: Eric Funk

Eric Funk — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:10:50 +0000

Steve, I understand your problem with the idea that House’s team performs all their own tests, lab work, and procedures, especially given the list of excellent reasons in your earlier response (54). However, there needs to be a small amount of suspension of disbelief in enjoying any sort of narrative. In the course of this episode, Foreman mentions that House “doesn’t trust nurses to do anything [but hold legs during lumbar punctures, etc.].” Though in reality it would be highly far-fetched for three doctors to be credentialed to perform all of the procedures these guys do, having specialists and random characters pop in to do the tests would probably clutter the show, and it’s not /impossible/ because their department isn’t specialized per se…

Don’t take my nit picking of your nit picking as anything more than that. I love your reviews and wish the writers would hire a proper medical consultant to bolster that half of the show’s appeal. Also, I love having a question or hunch that something is amiss when I’m watching and know where to go to get my answer.

By: Aidan

Aidan — Wed, 16 May 2007 22:10:01 +0000

As a fully qualified Biomedical Scientist (BSc Microbiology Msc Clinical Chemistry)
I find the YGs interest in our work refreshing. Most of the Doctors I work with have no
concept of what we do, or how we do it, most of the time I think they only order tests
that were on ER or Casualty (the British version for all you Americans) the previous night.
They seem to have no clinical significance what so ever. At least House tries to order
relevent tests.

By: Gareth Bessant

Gareth Bessant — Thu, 03 May 2007 21:09:37 +0000

interferon alpha is a quite legitimate treatment for chronic relapsing hep C. ok its no cure but its not way out.

By: OVERRANDOM

OVERRANDOM — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:49:45 +0000

Wouldn’t it be absolutely impossible to get Jack’s puke from the dumpster?
Even if it was possible, it wouldn’t be only the puke anymore. Pieces from the carpet, then stuff mixed with the other garbage, and some more left behind on the vacuum cleaner or whatever.

By: Matthew Goldfinch

Matthew Goldfinch — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 04:52:46 +0000

Of course House is being petty and cruel: Pain loves company; when House isn’t in as much pain, he’s historically been compassionate enough to give people his beloved vicodin and he even made up an excuse to help Foreman deal with his psychological stress about imminent extreme pain (pain-induced stress cardiomyopathy*). Tritter, who thinks he is suffering, has no idea how much worse House was suffering already (physical leg pain, psychological pain about the DEA enforcing House not being allowed reasonable amounts of opiates, possible psychological pain about the events in episode 3-01, and psychological pain from the failure of drastic measures): He probably doesn’t care about House’s pain and thinks it’s the vicodin behind the cruelty; he (since you have to be an algesiologist or a pain-sufferer to know how serious extreme pain is) has no idea how dangerous House-in-pain is and also has no idea about how much suffering will occure if Wilson loses his DEA number, because he only knows narcotics as addictive street drugs that are far too dangerously addictive to prescribe to people. If only the war on drugs didn’t exist, Tritter would never have been so dangerously misinformed and there’d be no chance of losing the main character to PISCM.
Oh, and there’s a guy who appeared on a television show in Aus who said all you needed to do to beat nicotine (not just smoking and apparently without SA, RR, or Zyban) was to realise how the benefits of smoking that kept you smoking despite the risks are illusiory and that the actual balance of physical and psychological dependence was far in favour of psychological (he said studies with radioactively-labelled nicotine showed that the withdrawal symptoms are alleviated before the nicotine gets there).

* A friend borrowed it for a SF story for an English assignment and gave me it for proof-reading, drawing me here: This woman is treated for a disease which causes the local peripheral nervous system at the point of infection to, often irreversibly, cause constant pain that she describes as “like being exposed to molten tungsten and superfluid helium at the same time”, described as “Peripheral Hyperalgesia”; the character is described as having been put on the strongest painkillers available only after she suffered five pain-induced cardiac arrests and threatened to sue the doctor for “dangerous malpractice” and charge him with torture.